Trinkets
by Chibi's Sister
Summary: It is a pathetic pile, lying there in that flimsy plastic bin... Susan collects what her family has left behind. Drabblish.


A/N: Just an odd, drabblish piece that came to me. Could be considered a companion of sorts to _Black Gloves_

It is a pathetic pile, lying there in that flimsy plastic bin. Just a pathetic pile that makes her heart stop and her knuckles turn white and her lungs gasp for the air that has been sucked out of the room.

"These were found on the bodies," the officer says gruffly, not meeting her eyes, just as she will not meet his.

Instead, she stares at the pathetic little pile—a bloodstained cap that had once been Edmund's, Lucy's little silver locket, her parents' wedding rings, Peter's watch that had been a graduation present from Professor Kirk. With black-gloved fingers cold and numb, she sifts through them , little trinkets, still bearing the signs of the carnage—her eyes squeeze shut—such little things that are all she has left. Her hands close around Edmund's cap, clutching it tight to her chest, desperately fighting the urge to weep.

A dull glow catches her eye, and she looks down at the bin. Four rings, lying where the cap had covered, two yellow—but not gold—and two green, not the nasty oxidized copper kind of green, but a richer, lustrous green. They are glowing.

No, it's just as trick of the dull sunlight that filtered through the dirty windowpanes. That was all. Still, she hesitantly fingers one—it was yellow, like the rising sun, like a lion's mane—and feels the cold smoothness of the metal beneath the worn satin of her gloves. Unbidden, memories trickle in, half-forgotten stories. She sees Professor Kirk's wise, dignified face and Aunt Polly's serene smile, and hears a voice like rushing water. _Long ago_, _when the Land of Narnia was first born from the Lion's song, came the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly, bearing magic rings…_

And as quickly as the fancies come, she brushes them away again. What can she be thinking of to indulge in such childhood imaginings in such a time and place? Her finger jerks away from the ring and places the cap back in the bin. She nods briskly at the officer. "These were theirs."

He nods back and wordlessly pours that pathetic pile of trinkets into a brown paper bag and hands it to her. Silently, she signs the paperwork that he shoves at her, and walks out of the station.

She doesn't touch the bag until the day of the funeral.

At first, she had intended to have the artifacts buried with her family. But she can't bear to think of laying that bloodstained cap with Edmund—as though the dark brown blotch somehow makes him more dead than those sightless, staring eyes and clammy skin—and she finds herself clasping Lucy's locket around her neck. Her hands fold around the wedding rings and Peter's watch and she hugs them to herself, and the tears that have been so long locked inside that shuttered heart finally spring to her eyes and trickle down her cheeks.

The locket she wears to the funeral, and every day after, her long, graceful fingers often reaching up to touch the little silver heart. Her parents' rings and Peter's watch she puts away in a jewelry box, to be passed on to her children one day. The cap, the awful bloodstained cap, she tucks away in the darkest corner of her closet, the corner where she falls on her knees on dark nights when the pain is like a knife in her heart and the tears run down her cheeks, soaking into the battered brown cap.

And the rings…for such a long time she leaves them on her dresser, pretending not to see them as she goes about her daily toilette. Then one day her friend ask about them, and goes to try one on, only being distracted at the very last moment by an inquiry about her new dress. When the friend leaves, she puts on her black gloves and puts the rings in an old hatbox. There they stay, although the hatbox moves, from the little flat to a bigger one for two, to the little house with the yard where her children romp and play, always quickly put on the highest shelf in the closet.

Once, she watches her children laughing, playing tag around the towering apple tree in the yard, the one that produces the delicious apples that are a little more golden than yellow in their hue, and she goes to the closet and pulls out the hatbox. She puts her gloves on—they are white, now, not black—and picks them up. She never touches the rings without gloves, though she will not tell herself why. Once again, she feels that cold metal, and a pang pierces her heart. Out the window, she watches her children play.

"Maybe when they're a bit older," she mutters to herself, dropping the rings one by one into the bottom of the hatbox. She bites her lip. They are so young yet—dark-haired Rose who is already taking on Lucy's wide-eyed innocence, and freckled Clarence with Peter's ready, genial smile. She glances down at the last ring—glowing yellow like the Lion's mane in the sun—and drops it in with the others.

_Let them be mine for just a little longer_, she thinks to herself, and tucks the hatbox back onto its shelf.


End file.
